How my iPhone helped me lose 40 pounds in 4 months

Everyone looks for an edge when dieting and trying to lose weight. There are more gimmicks and ridiculous diets out there than I could name, but if you have an iPhone or iPod Touch there are simple things out there that can greatly enhance working out and dieting.

The first day of the year I set out to get back in shape and lose a considerable amount of weight before my wedding in July and I researched ways to track, get educated, and stay honest in my quest to meet my goals. I started with the idea of using a web app called Traineo to track my weight loss and exercise progress, but quickly noticed there were some critical UI flaws and bugs in this app, and you had to be at your PC to utilize it… which became cumbersome. So I started looking for something I could use on my iPhone that I always have with me.

Lose It! iPhone app

I was pleased to find the free app called Lose It! (iTunes Link). This app became and still is the core of the collection of apps I use. The app allows you to track your weight, goals, daily food consumption & exercise,

Lose It! daily calorie budget

and recommends a daily calorie budget for you based on your physical traits. Where it really shines is the ease of entering in your food throughout the day, you can search for just about any type of food and it will return an accurate count of calories, servings, etc. It also includes a decent database of exercise workouts and activities for you to enter, which are factored into your total daily calorie count. It’s fast and easy and becomes even faster as it starts remembering your meals and foods you have eaten before. I can usually pull the phone out of my pocket and log a meal in less than a minute and log a whole day in less than two minutes. I don’t need to wait until I’m at a PC to enter in my meals… with this iPhone app it’s easier and makes it less likely for me to forget a meal or forget to log a day altogether. I give this app my highest recommendation, it is solid and free.

iFitness

Lose It! covers the diet portion of my weight loss plan but there are also two primary apps that I use for working out. iFitness (iTunes Link) is a great app for learning and recalling workouts of all types. There are a ton of

RunKeeper

different exercises included, all featuring photos, descriptions and suggestions. It is also very useful for logging your reps and sets. Another option is iPump Dumbbells (iTunes Link) which has a huge database of free weight exercises and a collection of workouts to follow and progress through, with varying difficulty and intensity. For running, Runkeeper is the best app I have found. It is very similar to the Nike+iPod kit for regular iPods. One of the most notable features is the ability to track your run via GPS on a map, which is very cool. You can see exactly where your path took you on an overhead map, along with all the run statistics you could use. Although not quite as accurate, I think it’s the best alternative to the Nike+iPod for the iPhone 3G.

My first goal was to lose 40lbs by April 1st, which I accomplished. I have now lost almost 50lbs and am still shooting for my ultimate goal of 65lbs before the wedding on July 31st. I won’t say I could not have done it without these apps, but they certainly made it easier and even more fun!

Here are some other apps that I have utilized in my weight loss mission: